Plaintiff voluntarily drops HID Global from biometric data privacy suit

HID Global has been dropped from a biometric data privacy lawsuit in Illinois federal court, at least for now. The case appears to follow an emerging pattern of biometrics providers which were hastily added as defendants to lawsuits under the Biometric Information Privacy Act avoid going to trial.

The plaintiff quietly filed a notice of voluntary dismissal, without prejudice, in January. Filing the dismissal without prejudice means that the suit can technically be refiled in the future.

The BIPA suit Robin Cooper, et al. vs. HID Global Corporation was filed over the use of a biometric employee time and attendance tracking system provided by the company by its client, restaurant chain Hooters.

No reason was provided for the voluntary dismissal, but it is not clear that HID held or processed end-users’ biometric data, as asserted in the proposed class action filing.

No court order is necessary to dismiss HID from the case, because it has neither served an answer to the lawsuit or a motion for summary judgement.

Hooters deployed biometric scanners from Digital Persona back in 2012, shortly before the latter was taken over by Crossmatch. Crossmatch was then acquired by HID in 2018.

Digital Persona’s fingerprint scanners were integrated with the POS system, and the company makes no mention of matching services in a recent case study on the deployment, strongly suggesting that all biometric data was stored and processed locally.

The voluntary dismissal follows on the heels of a similar move to release FaceTec from a BIPA suit in recognition of the fact that the company provides biometric technology without handling end-users’ biometric data itself.

Article Topics

biometric data  |  Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA)  |  biometrics  |  data protection  |  fingerprint scanners  |  HID  |  lawsuits  |  time and attendance